A few weeks ago I was hired by a client to document the celebration of Seijin no Hi, or “Coming of Age Day”, of her daughter. This is a holiday held in January every year, where everyone who turns 20 years old in the coming year dresses up in traditional attire and celebrate at their local city hall, as well as with friends and family elsewhere.
I really enjoyed this shoot (despite starting 7 am in the morning, gah). One big reason is that I got to join them for half a day, enough time to get plenty of good photos of both the preparations and at Meiji Shrine in central Tokyo.
While most of my portrait sessions these days are fairly short projects, rarely lasting more than 90 minutes, I really enjoy longer shoots, where there are less stress and enough time to get everyone involved relaxed. And as a documentary-style portrait photographer at heart, There’s just something special about being able to follow the preparation phase too, and capture all those candid moments too, rather than just shooting after everything has been set up and tweaked to perfection.
Hopefully, there will be more shoots like this in the future. If you have a big event in the Tokyo region coming up and would like to get it captured like this, please don’t hesitate to contact me!
